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Barbablù (Bluebeard)

Sette Project by Collettivo K aims to read fairy tales as an adventure into the female psyche: sources of inspiration for this kind of reading are, primarily, Pinkola Estes’s “‘Women Who Run with Wolves” and Angela Carter’s ”The Bloody Chamber”, texts offering a psychoanalytic and a modernized view of fairy tales.

The first two videos of this project (“Barbablù” and “La bella addormentata”) were shot in Malta, the land of the Mother Goddess, where the biggest temples dedicated to her are, such as Hagar Qim or Gigantija, the megalithic temple in the island of Gozo, one of the oldest places of worship in the Mediterranean, dating back to 5,000 years before Christ.

Both videos have a circular structure, giving a kind of cyclicity and infinite duration to this journey, as in the recurrence of stages required to achieve the transmutation of the elements in the alchemical process. The descent within the Self meanders through the debatings of the Ego.

The opening scene of Barbablù shows a swarm of elements of the Self trapped in patterns of thought, and a black woman recurring throughout the sequence to represent the ban. Feminine elements move according to their own internal rhythm, without breakage. Even the element of the key, that is, of consciousness, does not bear connotations of violence as in the original fairy tale, blood is a red tissue that is part of the life of women, such as menstruation, such as pain.

Archaic female figures who keep “young women” in their paths recur in both videos: in Barbablù three colors / alchemical states. The passage of the keys symbolizes the path to awareness, but also the deep connection inside the internal elements of the Self that allows a kind of metamorphosis of attitude resulting in a change in real life, as well as the link between the infinite generations of women.

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With the support of the Culture Programme 2007-2013 of the European UnionThis project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.